...because we don't have to be perfect

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
July 6, 2025
Proper 9, C
Galatians 6:(1-6)7-16
Psalm 66:1-8
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

People tend to really like the idea of perfection, and at the same time, we have terrible problems with perfection. Perfection is not really for us, and we’re not particularly good at perfection. We just can’t really achieve it, and yet we often try to strive for perfection, and it often leads us off the rails. 

Perfection is unrealistic. It’s unobtainable.

Our desires for perfection do tend to make us fight amongst each other, though. Whoever is closer to perfection gets more money. Whoever is closer to perfection is seen as not only worth more, but also more worthy of anything and everything good in life. Look at the latest bill brought by President Trump. Those with the greatest economic output get the greatest benefit by his bill, while those with the least economic output get harmed the most by his bill. The president’s bill follows the lie of perfectionism, that the best are worth the most and the worst are worth the least. 

That runs completely counter to Jesus’ teaching and completely counter to God’s view of human worth. All are worthy, not for being more or less perfect; all are worthy simply for being. We are all God’s children, and we are all equally worthy of love and belonging, honor and respect. We are all worth the same human dignity, regardless of how nearly perfect or drastically imperfect we may seem. 

How do I know this? Two things: Jesus’ teaching and Jesus’ death on the cross.

Look at Jesus’ teaching. In Matthew 20, Jesus told a parable of a landowner who had a vineyard and went out to get laborers to work in his vineyard. Early on, he found some folks who worked all day, and he told them he’d pay them a living wage. Later in the morning, he found some others to work part of the day. Again he found others to work starting at noon, then mid-afternoon, and then he finally found folks who were still looking for work and hadn’t been hired. He hired them to work just for an hour.

At the end of the day, he paid everyone the same. All received the same living wage, which is what they all needed to survive. Those who had worked the full, perfect day were outraged that they hadn’t received more than those who had only worked the woefully insufficient one hour. They weren’t perfect; they don’t deserve as much. 

Not so, the landowner said. They were only able to work an hour, but they had to live a full 24 hours each day. They were just as worthy of getting to live as those who had been able to work all day. Our ideas of perfection and worth based on productivity run totally counter to Jesus’ teachings.

What about Jesus’ death on the cross? Did Jesus die for the worthy or for the unworthy? He died for all: worthy, unworthy, greater, lesser, middling. Jesus died to join all of humanity’s sins and mistakes with God. We’re told in Hebrews that Jesus was the perfect sacrifice to atone for humanity’s sins, and we’re told that Jesus made the perfect sacrifice because we couldn’t make the perfect sacrifice. 

If we look at the prophets, though, we also find that God didn’t really want all these sacrifices. God wanted us to treat one another like the landowner did in Jesus’ parable. God wanted us to bear one another’s burdens and to live the law of love for one another. We were never going to be perfect at it, and God never expected perfection from us. We’re human. We’re screwed up. We can’t be perfect, and God knows that. 

So, God became the perfect sacrifice for us, essentially telling us, “Y’all, the perfect sacrifice has been done, it’s finished, once for all, so you don’t need to do any more of this sacrifice things on an altar type stuff. The sacrifice is done, and it was perfect. Y’all don’t need to be. So, stop worrying about being perfect, and get on with loving one another. Get on with bearing one another’s burdens. Get on with treating one another as equally worthy of love and belonging, honor and respect.” 

Jesus was that perfect sacrifice for us not because God needed it, but because we did. We thought we had to be perfect. We couldn’t be, and God finally said, “Guys, I’ll just do it for you because you can’t be perfect, and you don’t need to be.” God stepped in to help us because our self-sufficiency was not enough.

That continues in all of our lives, Jesus joining with us to help us when our power and our self-sufficiency is not enough. We’re not meant to be in this life alone, and we’re not meant to be perfect. We’re meant to share this life with others, and we’re meant to seek help from God. 

With that help, we can then accomplish what we can’t do on our own. With God’s help, we can be in greater unity and love with one another and do together what we can’t do on our own. Then, for all those times when we hurt one another and screw up, God has already made amends for that so we can make amends with each other. 

We don’t have to become right with God. We are, so we can get on with the business of loving one another. 

That’s a lot of the message that Jesus told his disciples to go and preach to others because the world was pretty messed up, and the world is still pretty messed up. People still need that message that we don’t need to be perfect, that it’s not the great who are worthy and the not great who aren’t worthy. We’re all worthy, and any law or supposed gospel that preaches that only those who produce a lot, or work a lot, or are worth a lot of money, are the ones who are worthy…any gospel or law like that is completely anti the Gospel of Jesus. 

So, we get to go out and proclaim this message to others. What did Jesus say about those who didn’t want to hear it? We heard last week that his disciples wanted to rain fire down upon them, and Jesus said, “no.” When people don’t hear it, we say, “ok,” and we go. We leave them, hopefully, in peace. We don’t lose ourselves in rejection and get upset. We let our peace remain. We take our peace with us, and we go on to bring peace to others, and if they don’t accept it, that’s ok. We don’t force them. We just say, “peace be upon you,” and we go, because even our sharing of the Gospel doesn’t have to be perfect.

I’d love to say I have a good ending to this sermon, but I don’t, and it’s actually not even finished, but I figure that’s ok, because it doesn’t have to be perfect. 

Glorious Train Wrecks and Glorious Symphonies

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Emmanuel Episcopal Church
September 26, 2021

Proper 121, B

Mark 7:24-37

Glorious Train Wrecks and Glorious Symphonies

Have you ever had a terrible empathy fail? You’re overcome with emotion, exhausted, and totally stressed out by all that is going on, and you feel completely not good enough for all that is going on. So, you talk to a friend about it. The friend responds with, “Oh, that’s ok, it was so much worse for me last year.” You end up feeling even worse, like you’re still not good enough, but now you’re also unimportant.

I’ve been in a workshop for the last couple days called, “Dare to Lead,” made by and based on the work of Brene Brown. She is a researcher and author of “Dare to Lead,” “The Daring Way,” and other books about shame, how destructive shame is for us, and how empathy is the antidote for shame. 

Different from guilt which says, “I messed up or did something bad,” shame says, “I am messed up, and I am bad.” Shame is the feeling of being totally unworthy of love and belonging. Alone. Scared. Not good enough. Not worth people’s time. One of the major  antidotes for shame is empathy. Empathy helps us feel connected to others. Empathy doesn’t dismiss our pain, our fears, or the things we’ve done. Empathy looks at us as we are, warts and all, and says says, “I’m here with you; I get it; you aren’t alone; and you are totally worthy of love and belonging.”

Sadly, a lot of Christian theology says the opposite. We’re sinners, totally unworthy, and destined for torment forever. That’s what we deserve…unless we believe in Jesus. Then, we’re still unworthy, but God loves us anyway. That’s a pretty abusive theology. Shame is at its root. You’re terrible, unworthy, you don’t belong; you’re no good; you should be punished. Shame, being unworthy of love and belonging. 

Then, according to these theologies, Jesus comes along and says, believe in me, and God won’t punish you forever…because God loves you. That’s what abusers do to their victims. Tear them down, make them feel worthless, and then say, “I love you, and I alone can make you well, not worthy of love…but I alone will love you even though you are totally unworthy.” 

That’s about control, not empathy or love. It’s bad theology which turns God into an abuser, rather than a loving God. 

See the truth of our nature is that we are made beautiful, wonderful, and totally worthy of love and belonging. We’re not born with some stain of original sin. That's bad theology. We’re born, and we are hurt over time. We fear. We act out. We hurt others our of our own hurt. God is of course not happy with all of the hurt and harm we do, but God does not see us a terrible and totally unworthy of love. God loves us and hates to see us hurting ourselves and hurting each other.

So, to help heal us, God became human, showing us empathy and love. God, Jesus, knows exactly what it’s like to be human. Life is hard; being human is hard. It’s beautiful, and messy, and painful; a glorious train-wreck, and a glorious symphony all at once. By joining with us in being human, God says, “I’m here with you; I get it; you aren’t alone; and you are totally worthy of love and belonging.”

So then, believing that theology, that we are worthy of love and belonging, believing that God is not just trying to control us with fear and shame, what is Jesus saying with this dismemberment/mutilation lesson?

Well, obviously, Jesus is not literally telling us to cut off our hands or else he’ll punish us forever. I know it sounds that way. “It is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands…and to be thrown into hell.” “If you mess up too much, I’m going to hurt you…forever.” That’s not love. That’s shame, control, fear and abuse. Remember, Jesus loves us and we are worthy of God’s love and belonging. This dismemberment/mutilation lesson, then, cannot be saying, cut off your hand or I’ll punish you forever. The lesson cannot be about shaming us and forcing control over us with coercion. 

Hear the lesson instead in the light of empathy and love, and you’ll see that this lesson is about taking seriously the harm we can cause, showing us just how bad that harm can be, and so encouraging us to take big steps to choose instead a way of healing and restoration. 

“Golly, cutting off my hand sounds terrible, and Jesus is saying that the harm I can cause to myself and others with my hand can be even worse than that. I can harm other people in ways that are worse than removing my hand; I can in fact harm people in ways that become like Hell on Earth. I can’t bring about Hell on Earth. I really don’t want to do that; I don’t want to cause harm like that. I mean, I’m often hurt and angry, but gee whiz, I don’t want to bring about Hell on Earth. Maybe I oughta seek another way?”

See, this cast into hell part of Jesus’ lesson is not really unknown to us. Planes flown into buildings. Being so angry and feeling so alone that it seems like me against the world. Choosing numbing behaviors so much that people never address the problems in their lives, but just keep growing more isolated and resentful. Politicians wanting to win so badly and being so assured of their righteousness that they denigrate the other side as being evil, bringing about such division and strife that we can’t even countenance the thought that there may be some good coming from the other side, that freedom and public health become enemies of each other.

We get being cast into hell. We do it to ourselves all the time. Not casting ourselves into Hell on Earth can take drastic change, drastic giving up of something we hold dear and can’t imagine being without. Giving up the need to be right in a religious belief and for others to share in that belief. Letting go of resentments and accepting one’s own faults so that it is no longer me agains the world. Letting go of numbing so that we actually have to work together on life’s challenges. Giving up dehumanizing anger and entrenched wrangling over ideological differences so that we don’t make things even worse than our fears of what might happen if the other side won.

Giving up these things can feel like cutting off one’s own hand, or foot, or eye. Jesus is then hold up that pain next to the pain of the hells that we often make and cast each other into. Jesus is showing empathy and love, saying, “I know the healing work is hard, and I know, as we all know, how much harder life is without that healing work. Even though it can feel like cutting off your own hand, doing that healing work is so much better than living through Hell on Earth.”

God loves us, not in spite of us being unworthy of God’s love. God loves us as God’s children, and we are totally worthy of God’s love and belonging. God also teaches us hard lessons because God knows life can be even harder without them. “I’m here with you; I get it,” God says. “You aren’t alone; and you are totally worthy of love and belonging.”

Sermon: Dance With the Demons

Brad Sullivan

Proper 14, Year C

August 11, 2019

Emmanuel, Houston

Luke 12:32-40

Dance With the Demons

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”  We live with quite a lot of fear, don’t we?  Fears of all kinds and varieties. Economic insecurity, health issues.  Fear of loss. We have fears of violence, fears of natural disasters destroying what we have.  We have fears of the other political party gaining power (whichever political party that is for each of us).  We also have fears of not being good enough, worthy enough. Fears that someone might find out the truth about us.  We have fears of what the world will be like for our children and grandchildren.

These fears keep us striving against each other, trying to overcome each other, trying to make sure that if the world is not going to be ok, at least those I love and I will be ok.  In the midst of these fears, Jesus says, “Do not be afraid little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”  It seems that our fears are nothing new, but they are the same fears which have been with humanity forever, and Jesus repeats what God has said throughout scripture, “Do not be afraid.”  Rather than overcome each other, let go of your fears and live in love toward each other.  “Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Live in love with each other, and trust each other.  For economic security, trust not only in yourself but also in those your love, your community and neighbors.  Give to others in their time of need, trusting that they will give to you in your time of need.  Rather than overcoming each  other, we live for and with each other.  That is life in the kingdom of God, and it is the Father’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom.

Lutheran Pastor David Lose writes:

I think the call – or at least one of the primary calls – of the church today is to become a place where people are so rooted in the promise of God’s good pleasure, reminded of their identity as God’s beloved children, and affirmed in their inherent self-worth and dignity, that they can, indeed, see all those around them as similarly beloved and deserving of self-worth, dignity, and God’s good pleasure. The question for a Christian..[is] discovering that as we give ourselves away in relationship and service we find a deeper sense of self than we’d imagined possible. We are born for community and find a sense of self and meaning and purpose as we trust God’s promises and give ourselves away in love.”

Give ourselves away in love.  That’s not an easy thing to do when we’re afraid of ourselves and those around us.  Our inner demons often keep us from giving ourselves away in love.  A friend of mine, Steve White, recently wrote, “Perhaps it isn’t actually about overcoming all your inner demons.  Maybe it’s about learning how to dance with them.”  That speaks to me not only of the fears we have about ourselves, but also the fears we have about each other.  What if we don’t need to fight against and overcome our inner demons, but rather learn to dance with them, to accept them as a part of who we are.  What if we also don’t need to fight against and overcome each other, but rather learn to dance with each other, to give ourselves away in love, to offer ourselves daily to God and join with each other in God’s divine dance, turning even our scars into something beautiful.  That’s life in God’s kingdom, and it is the Father’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom.

Fearing each other, we end up scattered and fragmented, continually knowing that we don’t belong.  We have folks who have felt like they can’t or don’t belong to the church because of their political beliefs.  I know I’ve made people feel this way at times, as have other church leaders, church members, and congregations.  The thing about our political views is, most people I know, on both sides of the political spectrum want the same thing: a just society which brings about the best way of life for the most number of people.  Their difference is simply the ways and the roles they believe the government should have in bringing about a just society.  They both have their religious beliefs tied up into that, and folks on both sides of the aisle believe in Jesus’ teachings about the kingdom of God. 

Here’s the secret:  The government is not how Jesus calls us to bring about God’s kingdom, even though it is the tool some would use to try.  God’s kingdom is given through God in partnership with us, with our living into God’s kingdom, and there is room in God’s kingdom for all of us.  All of us belong in God’s kingdom, and so we need not overcome each other, but learn to dance with each other, to give ourselves away in love. 

Rather than fearing that the other side may win, can we at least realize the while the other side may be wrong, it is still striving for the best system for the good of the most people?  Can we accept the consequences if it turns out our fears were right?  Can we trust in each other, rather than feeling threatened by each other?  Cane felt threatened by Abel, and so he killed him.  We hear of folks and have experience feeling threatened by each other and each others’ beliefs, so we attack each other verbally, sometimes physically, deriding each other, feeling that they want to destroy all that is good in our society, our country, and our world. 

"Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit,” Jesus taught, so that he will find you not asleep, but alert and ready.  Our fears and the ways we seek to overcome each other, feeling threatened by each other, are ways that we fall asleep.  We fall asleep to God’s kingdom and are alert only to our fears, to our inner demons.  We all have inner demons.  Our families have inner demons.  The church has inner demons.  Our cities, our state, and our nation have inner demons.  Keeping alert, staying awake and being alert is about not overcoming and striving against our inner demons and each other, but rather learning to dance together. 

If we learn to dance together, we may find that we are not asleep when the master of the house or the thief comes.  Whenever Jesus shows up in our lives (and it happens all the time), how wonderful if he finds us not trying to overcome each other, but instead learning to dance with each other, giving ourselves away in love.  Over time, we learn how each other moves and thinks.  We still step on each others’ toes, but we laugh about it.

Living into God’s kingdom, us giving of our abundance when folks are in need, receiving from others’ abundance when we are in need; living in that kingdom, we can live without fear of the other.  We can offer ourselves in love, and learn to dance together.  “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”